Come to Me Softly (Closer to You #2)(35)
Author: A.L. Jackson

Everyone stilled. A dense silence thickened in the stagnant air.

Dave stared at me with unfaltering hate while Aly dropped her attention to her lap, like she could find the courage bundled there. “Jared and I . . .” Determined, Aly lifted her face. Her eyes darted between her parents. “We’re going to have a baby.”

Every nerve in my body lit in searing pain and gutting shame, because I was never supposed to be allowed this. It was followed by a flood of all the love I felt for this girl and this insane sense of pride.

Fidgeting, I raked my free hand though my hair as I clung to Aly’s with the other. I searched for something to say to cover up this f**king insufferable stillness that had taken over the room.

But no one said anything. They were just staring, wide-eyed and in shock. Both of them. That stagnant air suddenly dropped, strangling us like a f**king noose as Aly and I tried to breathe around all this bullshit and judgment.

Then that silence came crashing down.

Dave shot to his feet and threw his plate across the room. China shattered as it hit the far wall. It rained down, and pieces scattered across the tile floor.

Aly cringed, her shoulders coming up. She turned her face toward me, ducking from her father’s reaction.

Karen Moore started to quietly cry.

I rocked in my chair, that warning system blaring in my ear, screaming at me to get my shit and go.

Motherfucker.

And Aly was just sitting there, tears streaming down her face.

All I wanted to do was grab her, wrap her up in my arms, and get the hell out of there.

Fight or flight.

I was really f**king good at both of them.

But fighting with her dad seemed like a really bad idea.

And I knew I wasn’t going anywhere.

Dave pressed his hands into the table as he glared at me. “How dare you come here . . . into my house . . . after you did this? I told you years ago you weren’t welcome here, and here you sit with that smug look on your face.”

Aggression stirred, simmered in that place where hostility and anger always seethed and smoldered inside of me. Unstoppable, my hands curled into fists. Adrenaline pumped like fire through my veins, the malice from within my blackened soul spurring me forward, urgent as it begged for release.

I couldn’t stop it, couldn’t control it, and I pushed to my feet. My jaw clenched, the sound of my teeth grating in my ears as I tried to contain it, hold it back.

Because this was Aly’s dad who was staring me down, getting all up in my face. I knew he was just trying to protect his daughter from what he saw as a threat.

The same threat I’d been trying to protect her from for all those months I was hiding away in her apartment.

And was that threat any less real now?

I gripped the back of my head, doing all I could to try to calm myself, to hold in the rage that built and spread.

The thing that pissed me off the most was there was no self-satisfaction, nothing smug about what was playing out on my face. Yeah, there was pride, but that pride was all wrapped up in this amazing girl who’d shaken my world.

I tried to get control of my thoughts, to put them into words, because Dave Moore thought he had me pegged. “You have no clue how I feel about this . . . how I feel about Aly.”

Disbelieving laughter rocked from him. “Do you think I care about how you feel? What I care about is my daughter.”

Aly pushed up to my side. “I’m not a little girl, Dad. . . . You know that. And I know you’re disappointed, but this is what I want.”

“This is what you want?” he spat at her. “You want to ruin your life? Have you even thought this through? You’ve worked so hard, getting accepted into nursing school, and now you’re going to settle for this?”

Aly recoiled, leaning back as if she needed to put space between them. “You think I’m settling?” Sadness flooded her admission. “I never even wanted to be a nurse . . . tell me when you ever heard me dreaming of that, Dad? When? Deciding to go to nursing school was settling. Do you even know anything about me?”

Remorse flashed across his face and mixed with the anger. “Of course I know you.”

Aly’s voice trembled. “You obviously know very little about me if you think a child is going to ruin my life.”

“I’m not worried about you wasting your life having a child, Aly. I’m worried about you wasting your life with him. He destroyed his family. Don’t let him destroy yours, too.”

The words speared me, the sharpest possible knife driven straight into my soul, splitting me wide.

Pain seized my heart.

I destroy everything I touch.

Voices and faces and memories pressed in too close, clouding my mind. Bitterness roiled. I stumbled back.

Aly gasped. “Oh my God. Jared.”

I pushed around the table, all this f**ked-up world too much for me to take.

Aly scrambled over the chairs, trying to get to me, her face all pleading and filled with the fear I knew she harbored inside, the one that told her one day I would leave.

“Jared,” she whispered.

Karen stared wide-eyed at me, sadness swimming in her eyes, while Dave glared at me like the piece of shit I was.

“Just need some air,” I forced out because I couldn’t walk out of this house with Aly thinking I was walking out on her.

Rapidly Aly blinked, stepping away, giving me space.

Because this girl knew me.

I rushed out of the house and into the night. Cold air clashed against my heated cheeks, and I gripped my hair in my fists.

“Fuck!” I roared.

I stalked up the sidewalk, struggling to draw a breath into my constricted lungs, trying to forget the words that had just been spoken inside.

Because in them, I knew the truth. I knew what Dave Moore saw because I saw it in myself.

I froze when I lifted my head and caught sight of the little house that harbored so many memories.

Images of her face beat against my consciousness. Conflict ate me alive, tearing me down and at the same time building me up.

I hated it, knowing how those walls once held her presence, how she’d lived and breathed in them, filled them with laughter and joy and the warmth of her love.

Tonight darkness blanketed the face of the little house. It screamed of emptiness, of a hollowed-out vacancy that could never be filled.

I hated it, knowing I’d destroyed it.

Hated knowing I’d destroyed her.

That I’d destroyed beauty.

And now again I held beauty in my hands, and I didn’t know how I was supposed to handle it. How did I protect something so fragile. What if I broke her?